Russia says insurance claims for those wounded and killed in AZAL plane crash have been paid
Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to include a statement from Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry spokesperson Aykhan Hajizada.
The Russian Foreign Ministry has hit back at claims Russia had failed to pay restitution in connection with the December 2024 crash of Azerbaijan Airlines (AZAL) flight J2-8243 from Baku to Grozny, alleging that the majority of claims have been paid. In turn, Azerbaijan has accused the Russian information of being ‘misleading’.
In an official statement published on Thursday, the Russian Foreign Ministry accused a number of unnamed media outlets, as well as bloggers on Telegram, of spreading ‘false information’ of nonpayment.
‘We are dealing with yet another [...] speculation on the tragedy in the already familiar cynical style [...], calculated to provoke an emotional reaction from the audience’, the statement read.
‘Such insinuations do not correspond to reality. They are lies’.
According to the ministry, since February, the Russian insurance company AlfaStrakhovanie JSC has been making insurance payments, including paying AZAL compensation worth the full insured value of the plane — ₽1.003 billion ($12.3 million).
The ministry further noted that ‘claims in connection with the injuries and deaths of 46 of the 62 passengers’ on the flight had been fully settled. These included full payments for seven of the 15 Russian citizens, 35 of the 48 Azerbaijani citizens, all 3 Kyrgyz citizens, and one of the six Kazakh citizens. In total, the insurance payments to injured passengers and relatives of the deceased have totalled ₽358.4 million ($4.4 million).
For the remaining payments, the ministry noted that work to come to an agreement on the amount was ongoing with the rest of the injured passengers and family members.
‘Attempts by a number of media outlets and bloggers to misinform the public on this sensitive issue leave no doubt about the destructive intentions and complete lack of moral compass of their authors and those behind them’, the ministry wrote, urging readers to not succumb to ‘obvious speculations and leaks, especially such low-grade ones’.
In response, on Friday, Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry spokesperson Aykhan Hajizada wrote on X that the Russian Foreign Ministry’s statement was ‘not only surprising, but also misleading’.
In particular, he noted that these payments were made ‘strictly within the framework of AZAL’s insurance contract, as part of the obligations arising from the company’s insurance of the aircraft and passengers’. Therefore, it was ‘incorrect’ to equate the payments with the compensation Azerbaijan is demanding from the Russian government for allegedly causing the crash.
Hajizada also responded to an earlier statement by Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova, who claimed that the arrest of 13 Russian citizens in Azerbaijan in July was the reason for deteriorating Azerbaijan–Russia relations.
‘It is known that the deterioration of Azerbaijan–Russia relations was caused exactly by the crash of the AZAL aircraft as a result of the shootdown and by the subsequent behavior of Russian officials. Furthermore, the persecution of Azerbaijanis in Russia based on ethnicity, the killing of Azerbaijanis as a result of beating in the city of Yekaterinburg, has created additional tensions in our relations. Moreover, the activities of various Russian state agencies against Azerbaijan are among the factors negatively affecting relations’, Hajizada wrote.
AZAL flight J2-8243 crashed on 24 December 2024 in Aktau, Kazakhstan, killing 38 — Azerbaijan has blamed Russian air defence as the cause. Since then, relations between Russia and Azerbaijan have dramatically worsened, aggravated by the deaths of two ethnic Azerbaijanis, brothers Ziyaddin and Huseyn Safarov, as a result of a raid by Russian law enforcement agencies in Yekaterinburg.
Javid Agha
In July, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said that Baku was preparing to file a lawsuit in international court against Russia over its failure to properly take responsibility for causing the deadly crash.
Aliyev reiterated that even though many months had passed since the incident occurred, ‘we have not received any response from Russian officials’.
‘We know what happened, and we can prove it. And we know that Russian officials know what happened’.
Aliyev continued, saying, ‘our requests or demands are absolutely natural: Admit that this accident was their fault; Punish those who shot down our plane; Pay compensation to the families of the victims, to those who were wounded, and to AZAL for the loss of the plane’.
Nate Ostiller
